HEALTH AND ILLNESS

Managing Health and Illness in the 21st Century

Managing Health and Illness in the 21st Century

Introduction

Health from the socio-cultural and political perspective

A complicating factor is that health and illness are not-and never have been-opposites, since both health and illness can reside within the same individual at the same time. Clearly, health, illness, and disease are related concepts. But how does illness relate to disease? All definitions of health are imbued with moral, ethical (socio-cultural), and political implications. Perhaps the broadest definition of health is that proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO), defining health with reference to an “overall sense of well-being.” By WHO's criteria, only a relatively small percentage of the world's population could be classified as healthy. Health care is the treatment, analysis, and hindrance of disease, poor health, any injury, and other bodily and psychological impairments in an individual. Health care is provided by medical doctors, chiropractic, dentists, nurses, allied health, pharmacy, and other care provider. Health is established through optimistic growth well being and development, two major component areas include: mental and physical health.

Health from the socio-cultural perspective

Health is the basis for well being. Being healthy is referred to be as sound body and mind, to be whole and be incorporated. As the time passes by across society the researchers have given an emphasis on health consisting of being centred dur to balance (Antonovsky & Aaron, 1979, n.d.).

One's perspective on health can be familiarized by cultural values. Health reflects in membership and shred values in the community and in a perceived being at peace or at slightest feeling in control of a conflict. Health also stays in the environment; it is one of the major factors when we talk about a healthy environment we refer it to be as atmosphere of human rights including freedom of expression and work as well as water being pure, clean air and a sense of security.

Illness refers to an imbalance. It refers to something out of order. It can be constituted as a judgement as to what constitute the normal and abnormal. Social scientist points outs that illness is closely associated and culturally constructed with dominant moral order, social and political factors (turner, 2000, n.d.).

Health and illness have focused mainly on the relationships that cultural systems have with organizations, institutional practices, and power structures, as well as the epistemological basis of medical knowledge. In addition, they have explored the cultural dimensions of health and illness from ethnographic, comparative, theoretical, and phenomenological perspectives. Beyerstein argues that the term disease applies mainly to organic, physical conditions that can be traced to infections from bacteria, viruses, growth of cancerous cells, tissue damage, and so on, while illness refers to how patients perceive the physiological experience of “things not being quite right.” He narrows this distinction even further by contending that disease is primarily organic, while illness is primarily psychological. Not all medical anthropologists would accept his distinction. Beyerstein's ideas need further refinement, because it is well recognized that cultural and psychological factors ...